


Brothers In Arms

by Leonawriter



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Gen, Human Experimentation, The One Where Everyone Lives, or the results thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-14 00:39:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12996024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Sometimes family isn't who you're born to, or whose cells were grafted onto you, but the people you find out were part of the same project that would one day create SOLDIER, and it's something you create for yourself.





	Brothers In Arms

**Author's Note:**

> This was only supposed to be a 'what if AU where...' post on tumblr, damn it. But, just like the one I did the night before last, it grew until all I had to do was edit the first few paragraphs or so and there it was, actual flash fic.
> 
> So, uh... keep this in mind if some bits don't flow as easily. I tried to smooth things over in editing but may not have caught everything. Also: there is another character who cameos at one point, but is never named.

Realising that they were all part of some elaborate Shinra project while stationed out in Wutai is bad at first, bad enough that Angeal doesn't want to share it with the other two at all, half because he's uncertain he'd want to share information given to him by a potentially unreliable source, half because he doesn't know how either of the others would react upon hearing the news. He knows _he's_ tempted to defect simply out of disgust, but that in itself is exactly the beginning of the train of thought that makes him stop.

He wonders how Genesis and Sephiroth would take his departure. He wonders about the Third Class he'd been keeping an eye on. 

With all the time between the truth being revealed to him and his return to Shinra, Angeal has a lot of time to think. Which is why, when he'd finished explaining what he'd been told to the others, that he mused about how this could, in a sense, make them sort of like brothers.

It was meant to be an offhand statement, intended to diffuse the tension in the air and make Genesis and Sephiroth less likely to act on the expressions of murder that they had gained on their faces, but what he had not expected was their completely undivided attention. The worrying glint in Genesis' eyes. The outright  _hungry_ look that briefly appeared in Sephiroth's.

Nothing could have prepared him for Genesis declaring, suddenly, that in this case he was their older brother, which meant that Angeal, who had come second, was the middle sibling, and Sephiroth, still not yet twenty years old and sometimes, times like now, had a look of such vulnerability on his face when no one else was looking or he didn't care that they were, that made what Genesis said next all the more apt - that this news would, in some strange way, cause _Sephiroth_ to be their  _younger_ _brother._  

The fury at knowing that they had been used as experiments, that they might not even be  _perfected_ experiments, still simmered away under the surface, easily seen to the three of them but no one else. Genesis' glee at having the new and only half self-appointed status of older brother of the  _great Sephiroth_ , much more noticeable. But Angeal doesn't have the heart to suggest that it might be safer if they didn't mention  _that_ too much either, because no matter how dangerous the information might be, the new, if tenuous, connection with the others is worth far more.

Sephiroth, although this is while he’s still adjusting to how he was an _experiment_ , a _specimen_ , a _scientific creation_ , doesn’t end up able to dwell on it so much. It’s rather hard to when he has Genesis lording over him that he is now Sephiroth’s elder brother, and does that mean he can pull rank? He’s going to whether Sephiroth likes it or not. 

Sephiroth himself would never forget the mortification of being referred to as ‘the baby of the family’, dignity forgotten and honour having no place in sibling spats, while being held close to Angeal’s chest as Genesis laughed.

Without the raw frustration at feelings of inadequacy, Genesis never pushes his training room spars with Sephiroth too far, and whenever Angeal tells them to stop, he’s often answered with an annoyed - although sometimes amused - “Yes, mother” from the other two. Zack even watches sometimes, on those times when they don’t sneak in.

Sephiroth, who had never known or even truly understood what having a family meant except in vague terms and unreadable emotions that had passed only on other peoples’ faces, slowly began to realise that it was no longer some unattainable dream, but something that he _had._

Knowing already what their conditions are, none of them defect. Not so soon, and not one by one. They think about it, though - but there’s Zack to think of, and the rest of the SOLDIERs, too.

They know less about Sephiroth’s own origins, but that’s because Hollander had been quite clear when telling Genesis and Angeal that Sephiroth wasn’t of Project G, and wasn’t of _his_ creation, but _Hojo’s_ , and none of them are sure that they are quite ready to find out the truth because of that. None of them liked Hojo - there may have been some respect at first, but it was now tempered with a wary respect and fear that, despite their never explaining any of the details to Zack, passed down to him, as well as any of the others who noticed the habits of the four of them.

Hojo, when he finds out how the results of his and Hollander’s projects are acting nowadays, is less than impressed. He makes them fight harder in their training, and ensures that they get sent off on missions far away from each other, whenever possible, constantly complaining under his breath about _specimens acting outside of their parameters,_ and _breaking the control of the experiment._

Sephiroth, unwilling to remain ignorant when in his eyes his friends (his _brothers_ ) had gained a better understanding of themselves, and through it a sort of confidence that he had never seen in them before, puts himself to his investigations in his own time, until such a day happens that, by chance - or so he thinks at the time, although there are doubts later on - he finds himself in Nibelheim on what should have been a standard, routine monster extermination mission.

The dragons took a mere few minutes, even with Zack’s favourite trooper following on his heels like a chocobo on a lure and their guide to protect. The fact that he had felt a wave of distant familiarity pass over him as he entered the town, however, had led him to stay longer.

He spends the first night at the inn. The second day, however, is filled with the task of he and the trooper, who stubbornly refused to take off his helmet even in the dark of the caves, hauling books up from an underground library to take them into the Shinra mansion proper, where there was more room and easier access to the town.

He left as silently as he had arrived, deep in thought. Genesis and Angeal had discussed with him their thoughts and findings regarding their own origins - their discussions had been frequent, sometimes heated, and never once simply accepting the facts that they had been given as they were.

Genesis was the one who picked up the first ‘book’ of papers full of notes he’d taken from the books before taking the books back down to the library, as though he’d never been. His face remaining blank only so long before it contorted in fury.

“I take back everything I ever said about wanting to be more like you, little brother,” is all he says. “This is... _monstrous.”_

Sephiroth doesn’t say a thing, only demurely - to an outsider, one who doesn’t understand that Sephiroth sitting like this only means that he has withdrawn into himself, is in the same mindset as he had been in during his childhood, when experiments were par for the course.

Angeal is the next, picking up another book of notes, another page, his eyebrows rising.

“This says that they thought Jenova was some sort of Ancient - er, Cetra. Weren’t those the ones they say could talk to the Planet?” The others both looked at him. “All I’m saying is, if this was true, then wouldn’t we _all_ have some of those abilities?

They’d done their research, after all. Angeal had even gone down to Cosmo Canyon, once, while they were searching for a cure to their degradation, when they had come to terms with the fact that it would be a ‘when’, not an ‘if’. Before they had humoured Genesis into taking them back to Banora, the first time Sephiroth had ever tasted a dumbapple, and he had watched, amused at the very idea that LOVELESS could have hidden the answer to healing something in the real world, until a goddess had appeared from the lifestream.

Genesis had been awestruck for days. The first time he said anything after his - literally - religious encounter, it had been to inform his brothers that they were not allowed to insult his respect for the play ever again.

 _I thought that given what I have heard about these things... it is the job of the younger siblings to cause irritation to the elder,_ Sephiroth still remembered saying, and still remembered the conflicted expressions on both of the others when he’d said the words - and the loud laughter that had come from a nearby Zack.

They had communed, if briefly, with the Planet, or at least an emissary of the Planet.

“But then,” asks Genesis, by now concerned and pacing the room, “if what they made Sephiroth with is the same as what they made us with, and it certainly doesn’t _seem_ to be anything to do with the Ancients, then what _are_ we?”

An oppressive silence falls over the three of them, until eventually, Angeal shrugs.

“Hell if I know what _that_ is, but I do know what _we_ are. We’re SOLDIERs. And what was it that Zack once said?”

“He said that wings such as ours are not those of monsters but angels. I remember,” Genesis says testily. “And I suppose that’s your answer, is it?”

“One-winged angels,” Sephiroth says, and they turn to him, noting the bittersweet smile on his face, the way his gloved hands had turned into fists. “Half of the gods, and half of hell. But even monsters return to the Planet.”

“Wings of light and dark spread afar, she guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting,” Genesis recites.

“LOVELESS, Act One,” Sephiroth and Angeal say at the same time, and that seems to be that.


End file.
